


Puerta Entre de la Vida y Muerte

by lecroixss



Series: What am I doing?!: MCU Kink Bingo 2017 edition [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Boys In Love, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, I'm so sorry, Kissing, M/M, MCU kink bingo 2017, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Religious References, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky - Freeform, author has no idea what they're doing, dia de los muertos, except my grandpa kind of, holiday fic, not based on real people, religious views are not a reflection of the author, small town, there is a small town with lots of random people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 05:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lecroixss/pseuds/lecroixss
Summary: Steve Rogers is on a cross-country trip when he stops in a small, southwestern town. Sometimes what you're looking for isn't so hard to find.





	1. La Vida

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done for MCU Kink Bingo 2017 (Square I-4: Trope: Holiday Fic). I have no idea what I’m doing, honestly. Someone stop me. No, really, please. What is writing even?
> 
> I’m not Hispanic, so I mean no offense if I mess anything up. It also means that whatever I write shouldn’t be taken as a reflection of or reference for the culture or its celebrations. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t do research, but that’s always different than growing up in any given culture. In addition, there are by necessity some religious references and views expressed in this fic, but they do not necessarily reflect my personal views. Dia de los Muertos is generally associated with Catholicism (it's complicated), so that's vaguely present here. I've tried to be both respectful and realistic to all cultures and religions. If any of this might be upsetting or triggering to you for any reason, please leave now.
> 
> (Unbeta’d. All mistakes are my own. If you see anything glaring or consistently wrong, feel free to point it out. I’ll probably stare at this later and edit the crap out of some spelling mistakes, but input is always welcome.)

He doesn’t mean to stop.

He was only passing through, but the brightly-colored signs and décor were too interesting _not_ to stop for. So he asked around, browsing through shops and walking through the small town, and that’s how he figures out they’re celebrating the Day of the Dead, _Dia de Muertos_.

It’s confusing at first, because while the community he grew up in was diverse, they didn’t really have many Latinos. He ends up reading a bunch of pamphlets, then even more websites, and finally quizzing some of the more accommodating locals. He likes these small town better because, without his shield and uniform, they tend to recognize him less. Locals in smaller towns don’t expect to see Captain America casually riding through, and that goes a long way to helping him lay low, he’s learned. They laugh when he asks questions and the old women pat him on the head (they try, at least) and the old men slap him on the arm and not a single person does a double-take. He kind of loves it.

The priest at the small but clean church he finds himself in is surprisingly young. Older than Steve looks, he thinks, but still young. He has a smiling face and a calming air, and he knows from the instant that Steve sits down that something is wrong.

“I need some help cleaning the rest of the headstones,” Father Octavio says. “You look young and hale. Come help this old man.” His eyes sparkle when he holds out a scrubbing brush and a sturdy plastic bucket. Steve grins back, maybe because the father looks as old/young as Steve feels. He takes the cleaning supplies.

“Some of the people here have no one left to welcome them, but that’s no reason for them not to have a nice place to return to,” Father Octavio tells him while they pull weeds and scrub away moss. “We will place flowers and candles when the time comes.”

“We?” Steve repeats, amused.

“The acolytes and myself. Unless you are volunteering?”

Steve smiles and shakes his head, but it’s not a no. They work in silence for a long time, until the sun starts to sink close to the horizon. Watching the names and dates darken and stand out gives Steve a sense of peace, but it bothers him at the same time. The good father eyes him sometimes, but seems to be waiting out his mood.

“I have a friend. Had,” Steve corrects himself. “But there isn’t a grave.”

Silence.

It isn’t until they’re finished rinsing out the brushes that Father Octavio speaks again.

“There’s an open corner by the fence, just over there.” He points to a place underneath a drooping tree. “If you’re handy with a hammer and nails, we have spare wood and candles.”

Steve has to blink back sudden tears. “I’m all right with them.” He tries for levity, but his throat is too tight for it to really work.

“I’ll show you the shed.”

*

Steve has ten days before the celebration starts. In that time, he manages to build a simple altar and a make a rough sketch of Bucky the way he remembers him in their youth, before the war and Zola and Schmidt ripped away their innocence. Before the train and the ice. Bucky, glowing with youth and happiness and excitement, looking at Steve from his superior height. Steve never knew he’d miss being short, but this angle of his friend is the one he remembers best.

Absolutely everyone for miles and miles is sold out of marigolds. When the librarian watches him cross out yet another florist off his list, she takes him aside and shows him how to make colorful flowers out of tissue paper, then sends him back to the inn he’s staying at with thick stacks of yellow and green paper. He spends all that night and the next morning twisting and folding and cutting, with varying results. The innkeeper raises an eyebrow when Steve shows up for lunch covered in bits of multicolored tissue, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. When he comes back from the church that evening, there is a small but colorful stack of more paper on his pillow.

*

There are so many little details that Steve doesn’t understand, he’s starting to worry he won’t get them all right. He’s a details kind of person despite what most people think, and he wants to do right by this celebration. Wants to do right by _Bucky_.

Sugar skulls aren’t too hard to find. He’s assured many times that something presentable will do to wear on the day(s), so he spends a little time picking out a shirt he can match with the black slacks he carries around with him. They need pressing, but that’s easy enough. The innkeeper offers to let him use the building’s oven to bake little sweet rolls— _pan de muerto_ —because the only two bakeries in town are already working overtime to fill enough orders. Many families are making their own, but the demand is still too high. He accepts, but mostly only because the matron of the family comes by one day to sit on the porch and rant about how _wrong_ the bakeries do it today, because when she was a girl they made their _own_ bread and it wasn’t any of this stuff that tastes like sugar and nothing else, how do they expect to pay proper respects like that, you are giving this _forestero guapo_ the wrong idea completely, _Christo_ , no, I’ll teach him myself.

That’s how he ends up beating dough into submission (carefully, though, don’t make it too warm!) and being poked sometimes by a thin cane that has no right being as pointy as it is. He kind of likes it, though, and the memory of helping Bucky mix together their pathetic soda bread is less painful here somehow. He can almost hear Bucky’s exasperated huffs whenever the flour puffs into the air (ah, hell, Stevie, be a little more careful, can’t’cha?) and imagine the faces the brunet would have pulled at being poked none too gently by the demanding Señora Frances. Not that Bucky would end up as the one being poked—he’d always been good with ladies of any age, charming his way straight into and back out of trouble. Steve’s surprised when a tear hits one of the portions of dough he’s settling into a bowl to rise. Señora Frances snaps at him (“Did I say to add more salt? No, I didn’t!”) but she also gets up and helps him finish, then reels him in for a crushing hug as soon as they’re done. She strokes the short hairs on the back of his neck soothingly before letting him go and shooing him in the direction of the sink with the admonishment to, “Get all that sticky dough off your hands. We’re not barbarians here.”

When he gets back, she doesn’t prod him about his lapse over the dough or ask if he’s all right, even though he thinks his eyes must be a little red from the tears he couldn’t stop. She just whacks him lovingly across the shins and drags him outside so she can smoke and regale him with stories of when she was a young and beautiful woman, fending off suitors left and right. It’s maybe the most at peace he’s been in this century, and he even finds it in himself to say something about a friend who used to take girls dancing, a new one on his arm every week. She laughs at that and tells him that she used to be the same with her young men, flirting them into dinner and drinks and offering only kisses in return. Steve thinks she and Bucky would have gotten along famously, and the thought doesn’t even hurt that much.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 tomorrow, because I have control. I DO. (P.S. Title in English= Gate Between the Living and the Dead)
> 
> Comments and kudos fuel the crazy train.
> 
> Also, I discovered [tumblr](https://sablessx.tumblr.com)! Kind of! Come stare at my fumblings to talk to me or whatever you tumblr people do. (@sablessx)


	2. La Muerte

The first day is the day for children, and it hits him a little harder than he thought it would. He’s an only child and he never knew any cousins he might have had, and he’s never had kids of his own. Never even thought he would—not really, not until the serum, and even then it was only a fleeting thought. There was a war on, after all, and the men he knew only ever talked about kids if they already had them, or if they were married.

Now, though, he thinks of all the casualties from the battles he’s fought, successful or not, from before the ice and after it, and it hurts a little. He sees families both grieving and celebrating short lives and realizes he doesn’t even remember the name of the kid down the block who died of pneumonia when Steve was nine, and it made his Ma so scared for him that she wouldn’t even let him go to school for a week. He thinks of Allied soldiers bundling small, trembling bodies into trucks, and their faces as the children cry for parents that will never return. He thinks of the Commandos pulling the chocolate out of their K-rations in little towns on the border of Italy and France and carefully dividing it out to distribute to every small, eager hand waving close. 

So he wanders around and listens to stories and admires pictures and feels sad and happy all at once, because not everyone can make it, but at least there’s someone who can remember.

*

They second day is for adults. He knows that the other Commandos are buried with their families, in Arlington or elsewhere, but he makes up a little altar for them anyway, with permission from another group of families whose grandfathers were in WWII and buried close together.

“ _Hay nadie que no gustan visitas,_ ” they tell him, “Even if it’s for family. Besides, all soldiers are family somehow.”

So he sits in the early bits of the evening and swaps stories with the other families. Generic ones, in his case, and he has to lie a little to make it sound like these are his grandfather’s friends, but it’s good to be able to share somehow. When it gets later, he packs up and leaves them to more private reminiscing. They offer to let him stay, but when he declines again they don’t press him or ask where he’s going. Instead, they bully him into one more shot ‘for the road’ and offer him handclasps and hugs, reminding him to come back tomorrow, too.

It's midnight by the time he gets back to Bucky’s makeshift grave, and he sits in vigil with Father Octavio for a little while, until the priest gets up to start blowing out candles. When the only glowing spot left is Bucky’s little corner, the father pats him on the shoulder and reminds him that it will be cold tonight while looking pointedly at the two blankets he has draped over his shoulder.

It’s not unheard-of to sleep by your loved ones’ graves, although Steve gets the impression that it’s more common to set up at home. He doesn’t live here, though, and home was always with Bucky, so setting up in the graveyard makes good sense to him. He decorated this morning, but he fixes up the altar again before setting out two spaces to sleep. He takes the left, like always, and wedges his feet into part of the fence so he can stare up at the sky through the branches of the tree there. He’s given Bucky’s side the only pillow, which he knows never would have flown when Bucky was actually alive. Jerk used to shove it under Steve’s head after he was asleep because of his bad spine.

“Hah,” he mutters, tucking his hands behind his head comfortably. “Won this round, Buck.”

It takes him a few minutes to stop feeling self-conscious enough to talk out loud, but he’s got some practice and he can hear the celebrations not too far from where he is. He starts off with what he’s been getting up to lately, and what the little town is like, and how he plans on finally going to see the Grand Canyon. He carefully omits all the fights he’s gotten into, just in case, or else glosses over them casually. And then he starts in one the reminiscing. Every memory starts with ‘do you remember.’

Do you remember that time… Old Mrs. Sullivan across the street rapped your knuckles because you were trying to feed the alley cats? She didn’t want them hanging around, but we saw her later putting out old chicken bones and she winked at us and we never told a soul.

Do you remember when… a sack of potatoes cost five cents? It’s counted in _dollars_ now, Buck, and you’d think it was inflation and all but I did the math and it’s still real high. You’d have a heart attack, you really would.

Do you remember how… we used to make one bag of pig bones stretch? Broth every day, I swear, and you tryin’ t’ make it taste different even if it turned out tasting like dirt. And you called _me_ the disaster in the kitchen.

“Do you remember the first time we kissed?” he asks quietly. It’s nearly three in the morning and most people have gone home. The candles are mostly out, or else burned down to stubs. Bucky’s still flicker because Steve refreshed a few when he came back. He figures that Buck might have farther to travel, so he’ll need the light a little longer than most.

“I was seventeen and sick, and I was still out on the fire escape drawin’ and you were spitting nails trying’ to get me back inside. We had that fight while Ma was out, because you said it was your job to take care of me and I said I could do it on my own. And you told me I didn’t have to, because you’d be there anyway. And I asked, what about when you get married and move off to be some big-shot in midtown, or go out to the country so you can get a house like you always wanted. You looked so mad, Buck, face like thunder. I thought you was gonna hit me. Then you grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me instead.”

He laughs for a moment, shaking his head. “Fuck if I knew how to kiss then, but you sure as hell did. Taught me everything I know.” He leers at the air for a moment, the way he would have if Bucky was there. “I got to teach you other stuff, though.”

Being an artist had its perks when you were queer in Red Hook back then. It wasn’t too hard to find someone willing to go into (excruciating) detail about what two fellas could get up to, especially if you were willing to buy them a few drinks first. Some of it was pretty obvious, but others…

“They make special slick now, you know.” People these days have some pure image of him, like a Boy Scout all grown up. His comics say things like ‘geez’ and ‘darn,’ and they even asked him to do a video series for schools on obeying rules. He did it because Pepper said he should, but Bucky would have laughed his ass off if he’d known. No one remembers that he grew up in a two-room tenement and his best friend worked on the docks for years, or apparently that soldiers say a _lot_ of things in the trenches while they’re waiting to get shot at. “No more Vaseline. I mean, it’s around, but this new stuff’s so much better. Howard’s kid, Tony, he thinks it’s funny to leave it in drawers where I’ll find them. Or maybe he’s tryin’ to give me a hint?”

He hums for a moment, thinking it over. Who knows how Tony’s mind works, anyway? “There’s never been anyone but you, though,” he admits. “You’d smack me something hard, but it’s true. Everyone says four years is long enough, but it don’t feel like it. ‘Sides, I’d have to start from scratch teachin’ someone how stupid I am, wouldn’t I? Could take a long time, and I get busy. But you’ve known since you were thirteen and even stupider than me.”

He falls asleep not long after, voice trailing off as he recounts the increasingly ridiculous pet names Bucky used to come up with, and how he always liked…

*

“Sweetheart.”

“Yeah, that was always my favorite,” Steve agrees easily. It’s a dream—it’s definitely a fucking dream, because Bucky’s here with his storm-grey eyes and cleft chin, rolled over on his side so they make a little parenthesis on the ground. Everything feels a little hazy like it does in dreams, like he’s still half-asleep and lazy with it.

“I used to call you that.”

“It was my favorite,” Steve repeats.

“I left you.”

“‘S okay, Buck. It’s not like you had much of a choice. I don’t blame you.”

“No, you blame yourself.”

“Which is stupid,” Steve agrees, because he can hear the accusation in Bucky’s voice.

“At least you know,” the brunet grumbles. “C’mere, punk.”

“That one was my second favorite,” Steve chuckles right before they seal their lips together. It’s at once exactly and nothing like what he remembers. Bucky’s lips move the same way; are still as plush as always, surging skillfully against him with the barest, teasing flicks of tongue. But his skin is a little cooler—or is it just that Steve runs so hot now?—and his body is larger; harder. It’s like Bucky grew with him, a little, and the thought sparks something warm inside.

“I miss you, Buck,” he murmurs into the air between them.

“Miss you too, sweetheart.” His large, rough hand runs up and down Steve’s side. That’s the same from the war, at least, with thick gun callouses from various firearms, but especially his rifles. “Nothin’s the same without you. Don’ let me forget you, yeah?”

It’s a strange request, he thinks. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? But maybe dead people need reminding, too. He never thought about it like that, that they might need something to go on by. “Like I’d let you forget this mug.” He butts Bucky gently on the forehead, grinning. “Stuck with me forever, you know? ‘Til the end of the line.” But the words weigh heavy on him, because they reached it, didn’t they? On those icy tracks, with the cutting wind screaming between them. Screaming like the metal, like Bucky’s voice when he fell, like Steve’s heart when he watched.

“Hey, hey.” Bucky nuzzles him; coaxes him into another kiss. “None of that. It’s not the end of the line yet. You’re gonna be stuck with me for a while.” Bucky’s lips trace little tear-tracks Steve didn’t realize had crept down his face before returning to his lips, and it’s salty and sweet and eases his heart even more. He feels properly warm now, inside and out, head to toe. It’s the kind of honey-slow glow that infuses a place when the company is good and the fire is bright, and Bucky’s dark hair is haloed by the last few flickers of candlelight on the altar behind him. Nothing in life is perfect, Steve knows, but this is as close as he thinks he’s been in this century.

They stay like that for a few more minutes, holding each other and kissing, and Steve doesn’t know what kind of dream this is supposed to be but he knows he doesn’t want it to end. He’s hard but doesn’t feel a real need to get off or rut up against his lover, even when he feels that Bucky is hard too.

“You forgive me, right?” Bucky whispers, lips kiss-swollen and shiny.

“Nothing to forgive,” Steve repeats.

“It’s all right to move on, Stevie. You don’t owe me anything, no matter what you think.”

Steve mulls this over. “It’s not that I feel like I owe you. Or that I can’t live without you—I can, and I think I proved that.”

“If you call this living…” Bucky mutters.

“I do,” he cuts in. “I’m allowed to mourn, ain’t I? But I’m gettin’ by on my own. I’m even letting the team help some. But, Buck, I’ve always been better _with_ you. You make me my best self, you know? Like the serum. I could live without it, but it’d be harder. I’d be me, but different. Maybe less.”

“You’re _never_ less,” Bucky hisses fiercely. “You’re always you, and whatever that means has always been wonderful to me.”

“I know. But I’m never giving up, or forgetting. Stubborn as a mule, right? I’m stayin’ with you. You’ve had a part of me since I was fifteen, and I figure it’s in safe keeping.”

“Sap.” Bucky presses a kiss to his forehead. “If you’re sure, I guess. Just… take care of yourself. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to you ‘fore I can yell atcha about it. Remember that I’m with you, despite everything. No matter what, I’m here for you.”

It sounds like a goodbye, but Steve doesn’t want to wake. “Please, Buck, can’t you stay?”

“Aw, Stevie. Sweetheart.” Butterfly kisses across his cheeks. “Nothin’s forever. It just feels like it. Stay strong, yeah? And let the fellas help you out more. The red-head’s scary—I like her.”

“You would.”

“Remember: You don’t need to hold up the world. Just you, sweetheart. Just you.”

*

Steve wakes up to the sun piercing the canopy of leaves above his head and a chill wind swaying the boughs. When he rolls over, he realizes that the pillow is under his head, and the space beside him is warm.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope this was okay. I wanted to do a Holiday Fic that wasn’t something I’d done before, and this is what happened. I don’t think I know how to holiday fic. D:
> 
> In case anyone is curious: (all links lead to imgur)  
> [Pan de muerto](https://i.imgur.com/Ioqing9.jpg)  
> [Marigolds](https://i.imgur.com/mkyabSl.jpg)  
> [Sugar skulls](https://i.imgur.com/0j1mtZm.jpg)  
> [Example of an altar](https://i.imgur.com/WenhXRA.jpg)  
> [A soldier giving his chocolate to French children](https://i.imgur.com/RYh7Df0.jpg)  
> [Chocolate was important to the war effort!](https://i.imgur.com/19r7HSn.jpg)


End file.
